


A Million Miles Away

by FictionalKnight (Northern_Star)



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-31
Updated: 2009-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:18:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northern_Star/pseuds/FictionalKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, if this was the way things were going to work from now on, then Batman would simply have to do without Robin...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Million Miles Away

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the "Road Trip" prompt [](http://cliche-bingo.livejournal.com/profile)[**cliche_bingo**](http://cliche-bingo.livejournal.com/) [bingo card](http://pics.livejournal.com/fictionalknight/pic/000crpw3). Also, the story uses some of the events (and dialog) from _Batman and Robin_ #2. It starts just before Damian runs away from the Batcave, then heads in a somewhat different direction...

By the time Batman and Robin got back inside the Batcave, they'd already been arguing for a long moment. Dick had tried not to sound condescending at first, tried to keep his cool, but the boy just wouldn't listen. And as he tried to explain why there was a need for limits, Dick was just about to reach his own.

"Being Batman and Robin isn't about working alone and thinking with your fists," he told Damian, anger starting to show in his voice. "What about your detective skills? What about learning how to obey a direct order?"

"Look at you!" Damian snarled. "This pathetic impersonation of my father makes a mockery of his memory! Keep your clues and your 'detective skills' and your limits. I'll do this my way."

Slightly abashed by the boy's recriminations, Dick replied, "You're ten years old. You have a lot to learn, Damian."

"Then I'll find a teacher I respect!" Damian spat, his eyes shining with anger. Ripping the Robin emblem off his costume, he turned to run toward his motorcycle.

"Get back here, Damian!" Dick shouted, not knowing how deal with the boy anymore. "That's an order!"

Blood boiling in his veins, Damian stopped dead in his tracks and swung around to face Dick. "You do not get to order me around, Dick Grayson!" he yelled. "You aren't my father!"

"No, I'm not," Dick said, more calmly now. He knew that Damian was having just as hard a time as everyone else adapting to life without Bruce - perhaps even more so. "But if he were here, he'd be the first to tell you that there's a hierarchy, and there are rules, and--"

"To hell with all your rules and your limits!" Damian interrupted immediately, throwing the bright yellow R-shaped badge he'd ripped from his chest at Dick's feet. "They only serve to slow us down!"

Dick shook his head. "They serve to make sure no one gets killed. And when I say no one, that includes you, too."

"What would you care if I got killed, anyway?" Damian spat. "You've got everything you were after now that my father's dead, don't you? You took his place. You took everything. Everything that should be mine!" With that, he hopped on his motorcycle, and as he started riding away, he looked over his shoulder and spat, "I bet you're happy he's dead!"

Mouth gaping, Dick watched as Damian disappeared outside the cave. Crushed by the weight of these stinging accusations, he slowly came to sit on the metal staircase that led to the upper level of the cave. He removed his cowl and stared at the concrete floor for the longest time. He'd failed, completely and utterly - not simply with today's operation, but he was failing miserably as Batman, and worse yet, failing to have any sort of authority over Robin. Bruce would have been sure to let him know what a huge disappointment he was proving to be.

=:=:=

Outside, Damian headed randomly toward the northwest, onto the first major road he saw, anger and frustration coursing through his veins like a torrent of burning lava.

How dare Dick Grayson assume that he had any right to tell him what to do? To order him around? What gave him the right? Putting on Batman's cowl and cape did not make him worthy of them! It did not mean that he deserved them. Those were things that Damian should have inherited from his father - they should have been his. He deserved them by right of blood. He was worthy of them, unlike Dick who made a mockery of it all, dishonoring his father's memory.

Well, if this was the way things were going to work from now on, then Batman would simply have to do without Robin. He'd fail, of course. With or without Robin by his side, Dick Grayson was no Batman, and he would fail. Miserably. Damian had seen enough to know it would happen. He'd seen more than enough. He'd find a better mentor, one worthy of his respect; one worthy of his trust. Or he'd get training all on his own. Wasn't that what his father had done after all? He could do it too. He could do it better.

Riding off into the night, Damian soon found himself outside the city limits. He didn't know where he was going exactly, and he didn't care, as long as it was away from this godforsaken place. Away from Gotham and Batman; from the pathetic thugs he was expected to fight. Away from Pennyworth and Dick Grayson. Away from everything.

The open road greeted him, invited him, and Damian leaned closer against the bike, forcing it to go as fast as it possibly could.

He rode on the highway for nearly two hours, crossing towns on the way, but paying no attention to them. They were no doubt small and dirty, and not worthy of his presence. He overtook number of vans and trucks, laughing as he did. He was the fastest, the best, and he'd win this imaginary race none of them even knew they were entered into.

All of a sudden, the engine coughed... Damian looked at the fuel level indicator for the first time since he'd left Gotham and saw that it was nearing empty. He looked around, but there wasn't a town in sight, and when the engine coughed and sputtered again, Damian realized that there was no way he'd make it to a gas station before the tank was empty.

When the engine choked, finally dry and empty, Damian hopped off the motorcycle and pushed it to the side of the road. Frustrated and angry, he gave the bike a good swift kick and it fell on its side in the gravel. He kicked it a second time, and again, and again, until he'd made a dent in the metallic frame of the bike.

"Stupid, unreliable piece of equipment!" he cried, giving the bike one last powerful kick that sent a wave of pain through his foot. "Stupid, unreliable piece of _Bat-_ equipment!"

In an attempt to assess his situation, Damian looked around, but there were nothing but trees. He couldn't even see ghosts of city lights in the distance. Nothing at all. And there was no one on this road either; not a blessed soul.

He was in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, alone in his Robin costume, without any cash or even a piece of ID.

With nothing left to do but walk to the nearest town, Damian decided to go back from where he'd come. He knew there were towns that way, whereas he knew nothing about what might await him ahead on this road.

The very first step he took sent shards of intense pain shooting right up his foot and all the way to his knee. "Aaaah!"

He took another tentative step, then a third, but the pain wasn't receding as he'd hoped. It only got worse. Much worse.

A defeated Damian slumped to the ground, next to the bike that had failed him and left him in this predicament. He was stuck here, injured, and without any means of going anywhere at all.

He was going to have to call Batman for assistance.

Hands curling into tight fists, Damian took a deep breath then he hit the button on his comm link and hoped to hell someone was going to answer.

"Robin?" came Batman's voice on the other end. "Robin, is that you?"

"Yes," Damian said flatly.

"Where are you? Are you all right?"

"I'm..." Damian looked at his injured foot and sighed. "I'll be fine, but I don't know where I am," he admitted in a small voice.

Through the comm link came the sounds of keys being punched, then a couple of beeps.

"It's okay," Dick told him, his previously worried tone having changed into a soothing one, "I've tracked your signal. I'll be there soon, just stay put, all right?"

"All right..." Damian said in a dejected sigh. There wasn't anything else he could have said, even though quite a few snappy answers came to mind. Voicing them wouldn't serve any purpose, he knew, unless perhaps cause Dick to change his mind about coming to pick him up.

=:=:=

Damian wasn't sure how long he'd been sitting in the grass, massaging his injured foot and ankle, when the Batmobile finally came into view. It landed smoothly a few feet away from where he sat. A moment later, Batman was coming around the front of the car.

Eyes squinting against the bright headlights, Damian got to his feet awkwardly, his limbs heavy from exhaustion and sitting for so long. He winced and bit back a painful groan as he attempted to take a first step.

Dick seemed to hurry his pace to reach him then. "You're hurt," the man stated simply, and he slid an arm around the boy's waist, helping him limp over to the car.

"I'm okay," Damian argued, though he sounded less than convincing.

Dick shook his head but said nothing. Instead he helped him into the car. Shutting the door almost immediately, he went around the back of the Batmobile, popped open the trunk, then went over to collect the motorcycle. He hauled it into the car, grunting from the effort a few times. Once the bike was safely inside the car, he sat down at the wheel again.

"We're probably too heavy to fly," Dick said, as he put the car in gear and made a U-turn to head back toward Gotham.

Damian shrugged. "Whatever," he said, and he braced himself for the lecture he was certain was just about to come.

Except it didn't...

They drove for over half an hour in absolute silence. With every new mile, Damian felt increasingly uncomfortable. He'd expected a lecture, he was prepared for it. But this silence? It was unsettling. Worse yet, Dick hadn't looked at him once since he'd gotten in the car. Damian didn't know how to interpret any of this, didn't know what it meant, didn't know if it was a good sign, or a very, very bad one.

Finally, when he thought he'd go insane wondering about it, Damian finally asked, "No lecture?"

"I didn't think one was required," Dick told him, his eyes still fixed on the road ahead.

"So instead you're giving me the silent treatment?"

"No." Dick turned his head slightly this time. "If you want to talk, we can," he suggested.

Knowing exactly what this meant - that Dick was waiting for him to explain his actions, or apologize, neither of which he was prepared to do - Damian shot back, "I have nothing I want to say."

"That's all right, too," Dick replied in a tone that was infinitely softer than the one Damian had expected him to use.

The rest of the trip was spent in silence, with Damian trying as hard as he could not to give in to sleep. When he lost his battle against exhaustion, they were still several miles away from Gotham.

=:=:=

Damian felt himself being lowered onto his bed. He pretended to be asleep still as the covers were pulled over him and he was tucked in.

At the first sounds of footsteps heading away, however, his eyes fluttered open just slightly and he caught a glimpse of Batman's receding form, the pointy-eared cowl hanging upside down limply against the man's back.

Dick closed the door as he exited the room. Damian waited for him to walk away, but for some reason he wasn't doing so just yet. Instead, Damian heard footsteps coming toward the room. Pennyworth, he guessed.

"Is the young master all right?" the older man asked in hushed tones.

"You may want to check his ankle in the morning," Dick replied, "but I think he'll be fine."

Sitting up in bed, Damian waited until, finally, two sets of footsteps headed away from his room. Carefully, he got out of bed and, even more carefully and silently, he headed toward the door, choosing to crawl on his hands and knees rather than risk injuring his ankle any further. He wasn't sure he could stand to put any weight on it just yet anyway.

As he reached the door, Damian placed an ear against it so he could hear the rest of the conversation between Alfred and Dick.

"...he's not the first member of this family to run away," Dick was saying.

"Good of you to bring him back home again, sir."

"What else was I going to do, Alfred?" Dick said. "Leave him out there on his own all night, even after he called for help? I couldn't do _that_."

The voices were heading further away and getting harder to hear, so Damian cracked the door opened a little.

"It's what master Bruce would have done."

Dick's laughter resounded in the hall. "Yeah, and he would have called it teaching us a lesson, too." There was a pause, then he went on, "But, Alfred, I'm not Damian's father, and I'm certainly not Bruce, and I'll be damned if I'm going to start treating Damian the way Bruce treated us."

Damian frowned at these words. Treating him what way, he wondered in anger; with respect? And honor? Like he belonged there?

By now, the voices were almost too far to hear. He'd missed just about the entirety of Pennyworth's comment, having caught only a "sir?" at the end. Tired and frustrated, Damian was about to shut the door and go back to bed when he caught Dick's reply.

"What does it matter, Alfred?" Dick was saying, "No matter what else he is, he's my brother."

Damian blinked, taken by surprise. This was...very much unexpected, he thought. He poked his head out of the door, now determined to hear the end of their conversation.

Dick went on, saying, "So if he wants to run away, fine. I can't claim to understand how he thinks. But I know one thing, though... He could be halfway around the world, if and when he calls me for help, I'll always make sure he gets it. It's what brothers are supposed to do, Alfred, look out for each other."

Damian was faintly aware that Pennyworth was saying something else then, but he couldn't hear, and it didn't matter anymore. He closed the door quietly and let his head drop as tears of remorse and regret started welling in his eyes.

=> End.


End file.
